I thought "gold pressed latinum" was the preferred currency of moneyed-types in the alpha quadrant? I couldn't imagine Quark dealing in any other kind, certainly not the ordinary non-gold pressed variety.

Yes, the latinum is so precious that each bar has a very small amount mixed with the gold; without the gold pure latinum would either be excessively expensive for a bar that could be handled or so small that handling it for transactions would be impractical.

There's also the fact that pure latinum is a liquid, which makes it somewhat inconvenient to handle. Suspending it in gold makes it handier and easy to split into predefined amounts (slips, strips, bars and bricks).

The Federation clearly had an economy of sorts. Joseph Sisko had a restaurant in high demand, the Picard family had a traditional vineyard, so luxury goods and services still attracted a premium, but I don't think they traded with money. Voyager was probably the best illustration of the economy of the Federation - replicator use was rationed because energy became a scarce resource due to the need to run the engines at full tilt without stopping to refuel with antimatter.

The economy would be based on energy, given that starship travel makes obtaining most previously rare materials a question of spending energy. Given the ubiquitous manufacturing capability combined with fusion generators as small as a trash can, it would be impossible to restrict the means of production to a ruling class of capitalists, so status becomes the main indicator of success. This is emphasised heavily within Star Trek plots - high status scientists, sportsmen, and of course, starship officers are plentiful. But none of them are notable for merely owning things - all of them are accomplished in some way.

In a starship economy, money as a means of exchange would be ridiculous - although the sequence of barter trades you mention from DS9 also seems ridiculous to me, because so many of the goods concerned just seem like something you'd just squeeze out of a replicator.

Energy would be cheap, because if you needed more of it, you'd just construct more generators / harvesters.

Your supply of material goods would only be limited by the supply of energy and mass. If you need uncommon or non-replicable elements (let's presume that using the replicator for transmutation is prohibitively expensive), you dispatch a starship to find some. This costs energy. See point 1.

It makes no sense to move any matter cargo that isn't a rare element via a starship, because common elements are everywhere, even if transmutation is expensive.

So money would be a bit pointless

* Because the price for anything common is "really cheap".* You can't pay for rare things with common things, because everyone has the common things already.* A common exchange rate is going to be impossible to keep stable because the only things worth trading are rare

I think the Ferengi economy is actually the curiosity in this setting ; it seems to depend on artificial scarcity (and repression of entire social groups, from the way they treat their women).

I was always under the impression that starfleet had a some what military structure and while serving aboard a star ship they would have little need for money as their basic needs were all provided. There were also some references to credits as if there was also an electronic currency in use that was not valued outside the federation.

Primarily because it comes from a universe where there is a relatively high living standard for Earth humans. Pretty much every other "future" envisioned that I've ever read was rather bleak and depressing compared to Star Trek's.

I rather like the idea of a world where all your needs are taken care of automatically, and all you have to work for are perks and extras.

Then again, I live in such a world today -- I'm on disability. My needs are taken care of without working, but I have the option of earning up to $200 a month without penalty for perks and spending money. Maybe Star Trek isn't so much fantasy after all, at least in Canada.

Usury (lending with interest) isn't the best example since the interest is more than an economic rent - as you say, it is a consideration for the risk, and credit funding is critical for regular business operations in our economy.

However, there are many forms of true economic rents, which do constitute money earned for no (productive) work. To name a few, there are monopoly rents, copyright and patent trolling, corruption (e.g. bribes, lobbying), inappropriate subsidies, etc.

Going to back to banks and lending, harmful rents are extracted by bank officers who engage in looting, the practice of knowingly making bad, high-interest loans to meet short term profit goals while ultimately ensuring losses because of the inevitable defaults. This practice is unfortunately commonplace in the modern banking sector and has played a major role in multiple financial crises.

Yet everyone is pissing their pants at mere idea that anyone would have to take big losses.

In the case of Greece lenders have "had to voluntary" take a loss but in general it seem to be believed that debt should always be paid in full and still interest rates are set aggressively against what supposedly is more risky.

But yeah, maybe it works, and the price of the lent money is indeed priced vs the risk and what the money otherwise could be used for. And it may on

Much more fun to go to the other end of the spectrum - something as ludicrously grim and dark as possible. Say... Warhammer 40k?

In which case, your Space Latte will cost you 30,000 eternally tortured souls of the damned. Or if you have a loyalty card, you can get it discounted to 15,000 litres of blood for the blood god and 3,000 skulls for the skull throne.

You're probably a Starfleet officer or a trader if you're buying in Quark's, in which case you either get a latinum stipend from the Federation or have trading profits. In either case you voluntarily adopted an unusual, high-risk lifestyle and represent something of an oddity.

You could probably get something at the replimat for for free* as well. In Quark's you're mostly paying for the atmosphere and the Dabo girls.

* in an environment like DS9 with a limited supply of energy and mass there are probably rati

Primarily because it comes from a universe where there is a relatively high living standard for Earth humans.

Not to mention the holodeck, obviously a lot of untapped (pun intended) potential. Including every fantasy you couldn't or wouldn't do in real life, I guess a space latte might become involved but it's not exactly at the top of my list.

Of course, you're right. And fuel is in such short supply that the Federation is only able to send its Galaxy class flagship (a 42 deck behemoth with science labs, a gymnasium, an arboretum, schoolrooms and childcare facilities, racquetball court, onboard live action theatre, and a crew between one and three thousand people) on the most minor diplomatic or scientific missions, rather than a whole fleet.

I always assumed replicators deployed on, say, federation colony worlds had either solar power or a power source that would out-last the age of the device (considering how often replicators break down, the second condition is not that hard to meet).

Alas, the archive of goats.com [goats.com] has yet to be fully restored, so I'll just summarize: to power the spaceship, you feed in kittens and out come pop tarts. The kittens aren't actually getting turned into pop tarts--they're teleported to good homes, and the energy from the kittens' happiness is used to power the ship. No one knows where the pop tarts come from.

As long as the currency is widely used, and if it does not require that I carry around large quantities of paper or valuable metal/minerals, I don't care. It seems to me that our current monetary system (mostly electronic) is just as practical as most sci-fi systems, and far superior to any fantasy system which still uses lots of valuable metals carried around in bags, just waiting to be stolen in The Shades or some other part of a fantasy universe with a particular high density of alleyways.

Actually, I thought Kalganids sounded like a periodic meteor shower. Derailing reality entirely and assuming that to be true, currency that falls from the sky at regular intervals sounds like a pretty good deal. I'll pay with those.